


Snatches of Home

by tigersinlondon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel-centric, Character Study, Family, Gen, Implied Lucifer/Michael (Supernatural), M/M, the tenses are different because these were written disparately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 22:03:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6489124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersinlondon/pseuds/tigersinlondon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Castiel's experiences during his time with the Winchesters. Not in any particular chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Celestial Parallels

**Author's Note:**

> Written at various points through 2012.

Castiel has often had to explain about heavenly culture to the Winchesters. Sam has asked about the hierarchy, gleaming religious interest in his eyes ("geek," Dean had remarked, and rolled his eyes). Sam asked once about if Castiel grew up (he did, to an extent, with the rest of the cherubim, under Gabriel's watchful eye), and if any other angels were ever children (most of the older ones hadn't been, to which Dean retorted that all the angels seemed like spoiled brats to him, Cas had given him a disapproving look, and Sam had had to leave the room to avoid the heated glares between them). Sam had also asked about missions with his garrison (routine), what Anna's real angel name had been, as "Anna" didn't seem a very angelic name (it was Anael, but Anna had stuck now), and if they were all actually related (they weren't) and if not why did they all call each other "brother"? (it was a throwback to the human custom of calling one's comrades brothers-in-arms).

So with Sam usually being the inquisitive one when it came to angelic lore, Castiel is mildly surprised when one day, whilst on the road to a hunt involving several possible demons and a fairly large coven of witches which he had acquiesced to "lending a feathery hand" with ("My vessels hands are not feathery, Dean" "Figure of speech, Cas"), Dean looks at Cas in the rear-view mirror and asks, "So why do all you angels keep comparing me and Sam to Michael and Lucifer?"

Cas's forehead crinkles slightly. "You are brothers, and remarkably close. You are destined to be their vessels. One shall kill the other." At Dean's glare of fuck-this-destiny-bullshit, Cas hastily adds, "Or so is prophesised. But Michael and Lucifer have already broken the …celestial parallels, as it were. Destiny is not so set in stone as it once was.”

Dean’s eyebrows rise. “Heaven’s golden boy and the devil going against fate?”

Castiel looks levelly at Dean in the mirror. “We have reason to believe that Michael and Lucifer were …courting. In heaven, before Lucifer fell.”

Sam, sitting in shotgun, splutters. Dean seems equally shocked, but not so much that he can’t make bad jokes about it. “One night stands not go down well in heaven then?” he teases. Cas frowns. “The courting process is long and arduous. ‘One night stands’, as you put it, do not happen.”

“But I thought Lucifer fell before humans were created,” Sam interjects, “How would they have had time for …what’s the word?”

“Mating,” supplies Cas, “You must understand, time in heaven progresses differently to time on earth. The archangels - Michael, Lucifer, Gabriel and Raphael - were created long before the earth, Sam, and Michael was the first of them all. They were alone in each other’s company for millennia while the other angels were created. Raphael tells me they were very …private during that time.”

Dean makes a non-committal noise and turns back to watching the road, his interest in the conversation seeming gone. Sam’s curiosity, however, has peaked.

“So if they were mated, how comes Michael still stayed up in heaven and locked Lucifer in the Cage?” he asks, turning his head to aim his question at Cas.

“They were not mated.” Cas explains. “They did not complete the bond. Had they done so, Michael would have been bound to fall with Lucifer; willing or not; and most likely, Gabriel would have had to close the gates of Hell behind the both of them.”

“Still doesn’t explain why Michael would kick Lucifer’s ass down to the pit,” Dean remarks, evidently still listening, “If they were …courting, or whatever.”

Castiel clasps his hands in his lap and looks down at them. “Michael is a good soldier. He obeyed - obeys - God’s orders absolutely.”

Dean snorts. “So God says jump and Michael asks how high?”

“Essentially, yes,” Cas replies, “He _is_ an angel.”

There is a period of silence. “Two top dicks with wings got angel-engaged. Who knew?” Dean is quiet for a moment, and then lets out an awkward bark of laughter, “So if Michael and Lucifer changed the whole parallel thing, was middle management expecting me and Sammy to …fulfil Becky’s prophecy?” Sam chokes out a peal of laughter too, snorting at the memories of Chuck (the real prophet)’s girlfriend. The corner of Cas’s mouth twitches in the beginnings of a smile, and he makes a sort of huffing noise, which is the equivalent of a full body laugh for him. Dean sees it and then he’s grinning all the more.

The Impala drives off down the road, the sound of Led Zeppelin streaming out the open windows, and the conversation is left in the dust.

-

The next time Michael invades Dean’s dreams with the usual ‘say yes’ patter, Dean can’t help but make _several_ lewd jokes involving forbidden fruit and serpent of Eden references, and Michael manages to blush without turning red, and then he disappears. Dean’s dreams are remarkably archangel-free for two whole weeks, and Dean laughs and laughs and laughs.


	2. Wings

“What do your wings look like?” Dean asks one day, a rare peaceful moment in the Impala when Sam is mostly asleep in shotgun and Castiel is sitting with less stiffness than usual in the back seat while Dean drives.

Cas meets Dean’s eyes in the rear-view mirror so he knows he’s listening. “You have seen them, Dean,” he replies, his growl of a voice almost indistinguishable from the dull roar of the engine.

Dean makes a dismissive noise at the back of his mouth. “Only the shadows.”

Castiel shakes his head. “You only _remember_ the shadows.”

“How’s that?” Dean asks, clearly paying attention now.

Castiel looks out the window, thinking, and then back. “When a car’s headlights flash once and then go out, what do you see in the light’s place?”

Dean scrunches up his mouth for a moment. “It’s dark.”

Cas nods. “You see the aftermath of my manifesting my wings. The ‘shadows’ are on your retina.” Cas being Cas, he actually makes the airquotes with his fingers.

“So your wings are a massive lightshow burnt onto the back of my eyes?”

Cas holds eye contact. “If I had shown them for any longer, your eyes would have been not unlike those of your psychic friend.” His mouth tightens in momentary guilt and Dean looks away.

When it is clear that the conversation will go no further without his direct and immediate interaction, Sam stops pretending to be asleep. “What colour are they?”


	3. The Moth

Castiel is standing in a greyish motel bathroom, his hair wet and his body damp and cooling. He has had a shower, upon Dean’s instruction, and Sam’s half-amused agreement, and is now watching the silent (it used to be louder, back when his Grace could reach out and…) elliptical flight of a moth around the light on the ceiling. It had flown in through the window while he was drying himself, as instructed, and caught his attention.

It is a trap, he thinks, a lure for the tiny moths with their infinitesimally small minds, to circle round and round, eventually slow due to the moisture in the air, and settle on a wet surface only to have their wings stuck and ripped from them, leaving tiny bits in the puddles on the windowsill.

Cas turns the light off, and hopes the moth doesn’t land in any water that will eventually lead to its own destruction.

He knows what it’s like to lose wings.

That is how Dean finds him, minutes later; standing naked in the bathroom and staring squarely into the darkness at the moth flitting around aimlessly.

Dean asks him what he is doing, determinedly looking at his face and nowhere else. Cas explains, and the unfathomable expression on Dean’s face turns to one of mild amusement, and he chuckles lightly (but there is no mistaking the fondness in the set of his mouth, so Cas lets him laugh).

Dean captures the moth in his hands, cupping them around its smooth form so as not to damage it, and releases it back out the window before shutting it. Cas imagines he can hear the flap of its frantic wings as it flies away, guided by the real moon once more (or maybe it is caught in the net of yet another bathroom light, he doesn’t know).

Dean turns the light back on, and throws Cas a pair of boxer shorts (that are probably Dean’s), a pair of loose sleeping trousers (also Dean’s) and a large t-shirt (Sam’s). Cas blinks at the sudden intrusion on his retina, but speaks his thanks at the retreating shape of Dean’s back.

The fabric feels worn and smells like the inside of the Impala, but it is comfortable and hangs pleasantly off the angles of his vessel’s frame. He steps out of the bathroom and sits himself down on the edge of one of the beds. Sam is lounging on the other, and Dean is on the floor leaning against the end of the bed. They are watching TV (and it is such a normal human thing that Cas holds his breath for a second and just watches them watching something that Sam called a soap opera and Dean called a guilty pleasure).

Sam offers Cas a beer, and Castiel accepts it gladly.

They sit in a very Winchester version of comfort –normality– and Cas tries not to think of the space underneath the shoulder blades of his vessel.


	4. Blood

“Your father is not here,” Castiel says, not unkindly, with Jimmy Novak’s mouth, to Jimmy Novak’s daughter.

She recoils sharply from his proximity. Castiel sees her father in her jaw and her eyes, grown up and bitter, her blood whispers to him like a siren’s call, _look, my body is stronger than his, take me_. But her face screams grief and hatred and deep-seated fear, so Castiel withdraws his hand from her cheek and rests it on the shopping cart in front of him.

“Did you kill him?” Claire asks, voice clear and older, so much older, but being an orphan will do that.

Castiel tells her no with a quick shake of his head. “His soul is in Heaven, but I did not kill him. I released him before I was resurrected.” He rubs his thumb across the cool metal of the cart. “The first time.”

Claire looks resentful and relieved at the same time, and something in Castiel remembers the demon who took a recently unoccupied body to appease a Winchester, and wonders if Dean would know him with another face. But Claire is almost a woman now, and it would pain her more to give her a father fresh from paradise when she has spent 5 years without him rather than erasing her memory of ever seeing an angel in Walmart wearing half her DNA and the same trenchcoat that she was wrapped in when she was a child on the couch watching her dad watch the news at night.

Castiel thinks about returning her mother to her, at least. But she is in heaven, with Jimmy, and that would be unfair on the man who gave so much to the fight for free will, to remove her now.

Castiel hopes he looks remorseful, but suspects in a tiny voice that sounds remarkably like Dean that any and all expressions will only cause more pain for the girl in front of him.

“My apologies for running into you like this,” he says, and he means it, but his face does not show it, because Jimmy was probably sorry for being late to pick her up from swimming lessons once.

He leaves with the bread and tomatoes and various other things that Dean calls ‘rabbit food’ and Sam calls ‘healthy’, but without frozen pizza or burgers, and when he gets back to the house Dean complains, Sam bitches, Dean accuses Cas of ganging up on him, Sam bitches some more, but Castiel sits on the floor in front of the TV and looks at his reflection in its black screen because there is a girl in a supermarket with a blurred memory of the last half an hour and a hole in her life where her father should be.


	5. Purgatory

Cas is fighting a werewolf when Dean prays to him.

This isn’t a new thing, the praying. Dean has done it often since they got stranded down here. Cas would estimate a frequency of once per day, but the light-cycle is too irregular to be called “day”, or maybe he just can’t keep track of time like he used to. Fighting every monster that ever crawled, slithered, bounded, flew, or just plain moved across the face of the earth since the beginning of time will do that to a person. Even one with wings (shabby though they are).

“Cas.”

Cas brings his forearm down on the creature’s collarbone, smashing it.

“Cas, can you hear me?”

Dean’s voice in Cas’ head sounds breathless. Dean is speaking this prayer aloud. He must be alone right now. Cas spins out the way of the werewolf’s claws, which catch the side of his trenchcoat and tear it.

“Fuck.”

Cas’ mind freezes up as he processes what is happening. He has watched Dean do this, before the souls, before Sam went to hell, before… everything. He can see Dean’s hand shoved into his pants in his mind’s eye and for a millisecond, he is left reeling at the image.

Then the werewolf tries to kick his legs out from under him and he is suddenly back in the game.

“Cas… Want you to hear this… fuck.”

Cas imagines he can feel the burning arousal through the prayer. He kicks the creature across the clearing.

“C’mon.”

The werewolf picks itself up and launches at him. Cas has a blade ready and in his hand.

“Oh my g-… Cas.”

Cas thrusts the blade through the thing’s neck and up into its head. He closes his eyes as it sinks to the floor and the blade slides out neatly.

There are no words for a few seconds. The forest is noiseless until-

_Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck…_

Cuts through the silence, a string of expletives that Dean thinks instead of speaking aloud. A sharp peak of want and satisfaction all at the same time hits Cas like a truck.

He doesn’t stumble backwards, or forwards, or any way at all. He wipes the blade calmly, as calmly as he can muster, on the trampled grass.


End file.
